The album explores ordinary life through extraordinary musical accompaniment, including vivid orchestrations, lusty horns, luxurious strings, vast choral harmonies, a rocking rhythm section and the unexpected intrusion of a braying donkey.

“Day-to-day domestic life might seem dull subject matter and it could be considered silly to glorify it with all these larger than life characters and musical exuberance, but actually, in your own mind, that is how important it all is.”

Foreverland represents Hannon at his most emotionally autobiographical, which he abashedly admits is “just a great big love song”.

The composer of Father Ted's celebrated Eurosong anthem My Lovely Horse frankly admits that straight ahead sincerity has never been his strong suit.

“Music that is too heart on the sleeve can be a little bit cloying I find,” says Hannon.

“I've done my fair share of love songs but it's hard to do it in a way that doesn't make you want to throw up.

“So the challenge is to write about love in ways that make the experience new and interesting, and actually in that way approximates the substance of the feeling.”

Neil Hannon

Born in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1970, Hannon is the son of a Bishop of the Church of Ireland.

“Possibly not a typical pop star background,” he acknowledges.

He is the founder and only consistent member of The Divine Comedy, who achieved unlikely pop stardom during the Britpop boom of the nineties with a slightly preposterous mix of archaic musical styles and audaciously witty lyrics.

The Divine Comedy released ten albums between Fanfare for the Comic Muse in 1990 and Bang Goes the Knighthood in 2010.

He penned the tunes for an acclaimed musical version of Swallows and Amazons, which premiered at the Bristol Old Vic in 2010.

“I don't love a lot of musicals, but I do love writing them. I love the exuberance and naivety. I get to be a little more exaggerated emotionally, a little more Hello Dolly.”

A year later he set the words of German playwright Frank Alva Buecheler to music in the short but powerful chamber opera, In May.

Then in 2014 the Royal Festival Hall commissioned him to write a piece for their newly refurbished organ.

The resulting work, To Our Fathers in Distress, he dedicated to his dad, Brian, who suffers from Alzheimer's.

“They gave me a choir so I basically turned it into a long hymn. Being brought up in a clergy family, I was raised on the Anglican hymnal, most of which I found out later was arranged by the brilliant Ralph Vaughn Williams.

“Like Vaughn Williams, I don't do the religion but I certainly do the music.”

“Sometimes I struggle to say exactly what I mean. That's probably the repressed Ulsterman in me.

The music is definitely trying to say something completely sincere but finds it hard to come out with it. But isn't most of the best music like that?